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Homemade Onion Cheeseburgers

While our family has significantly cut back on the amount of beef we eat, let’s admit it. Every once in a while, you really want a nice, juicy cheeseburger. But as I’ve mentioned before, I am quite thrifty. I don’t want to go out for burgers and spend $50 for my family. Since we got our food grinder, we’ve found we can make some very tasty burgers at home with meat we grind ourselves. We often add other ingredients. And we end up with a burger that’s really tasty at a fraction of the cost of a restaurant burger.

Last weekend, we made some really fantastic Onion Cheeseburgers. They were so good that I was literally BEGGED to make them again. Normally, when I grind meat. I do it early in the day so the flavors can spend the day getting to know each other very well before the cooking begins. We didn’t do that last night. The burgers went from the grinder to the grill in 15 minutes!

1. Grind the beef according to the instructions of your food grinder2. Grind the onion. You can add the whole onion if you want3. Now you are going to be a serious cook. Add the sausage and half the seasoning and mix well WITH YOUR HANDS!4. Add the rest of the seasoning and mix again.5. Shape into 12 smallish (about 3 oz) patties.6. Cook to your liking.

Let’s talk about the time and cost of these burgers. The meat was $12 total for the sausage and beef. Add the buns for about $.30 each and a half of slice of cheese per burger at $.20 each. That puts the cost of each burger at a mere $1.50. Try to get a decent, non-fast food 3.33 oz burger anywhere for that! And please note, we added no egg or breadcrumbs to keep these burgers held together. I trimmed some extra fat from the beef but I left a little. That helps the burgers stay together. Thus no other junk.

And the time from un-ground ingredients to burgers on the table was about 30 minutes total. The grill was started at the same time I started the grinding. By the time the patties were shaped, the grill was ready.